Set first in 1880s colonial Africa and then in 1980s London, Cloud Nine sheds a comic light on gender politics as the colonial and sexual repression of Victorian England is set up against the Feminist and Gay movement that emerged during the years of the “Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher. Part farce, part dark comedy, Cloud Nine creates a world where men play women, women play men, adults play children, and somehow, it all makes very good and proper sense.

Originally from Bosnia, Amer Kobaslija fled the war-ravaged country and moved to Germany in the early nineties. He studied art at the Kunst Akademie in Düsseldorf before immigrating to the United States where, at Montclair State, he earned an MFA in painting in 2005. Kobaslija lives in New York City.

He is represented by the George Adams Gallery in New York. His work has been exhibited internationally and reviewed by various publications including The New York Times, Art in America and ArtNews. Kobaslija has been recepient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant and the Joan Mitchel Foundation Award. He is currently an assistant professor of art at Gettysburg College.The focus of the talk will be on Kobaslija’s recent series of paintings "One Hundred Views of Kesennuma," an ongoing project made in response to the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed much of the east coast of Japan in March 2011. Kobaslija will show the slides of the paintings made after taking numerous trips to the devastated areas with his Japanese father-in-law.

For more information about these and additional College of the Arts' October events,

Jack Sholder is a director best known for his work in the horror-film genre, notablyAlone in the Dark, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, The Hidden, and Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies. In 2002, Sholder directed Beeper, a thriller starring Harvey Keitel and Joey Lauren Adams that was shot in India. And, in 2003, he directed Twelve Days of Terror, a fictionalized account of an infamous series of shark attacks that took place in New Jersey in 1916, for Fox Television Studios.